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EARTH: Extra-Capsular Extraction (LP, Sub Pop SP 123, 1991)

Earth: Extra-Capsular Extraction

Well, what are the chances. Out of the huge range of random-number-generator-driven possibilities that were available for this post, it’s another Earth album. I’ve already written about Earth 2 on here in the past. I bought this at the same time as that. This is their first album, featuring some dude named Kurt Kobain (sic) on extra-curricular duty – playing guitar? It doesn’t say.

Is this something of a theme album, perhaps? The cover picture shows a double-pupilled eyeball, and the text on front and back, bang on about eye surgery-related stuff, alongside a load of ‘look how weird and out there we are’ snippets of text such as ‘An edge to lay bare entrails’ / ‘Cut-out tongue and sex’ / ‘Each of the attributes is called a flame’ / etc etc. It’s like all of the most self-consciously woah-maan-eccentric post-rock song titles have been collected together and placed on the back cover of the record.

And the record? It includes, of particular interest, ‘Ouroboros is Broken’, the simply marvellous proto-stoner-repeato-doom-sludge template for so much of the music that’s exciting hip young indie gunslingers these days. Even eighteen years after release (!!) this still sounds utterly cool, and utterly serious. Sling some robes on them and call them drunken soothsayers.

Fact for you: extracapsular extraction = the removal of a cataract. Doesn’t sound as cool though, does it? An album named ‘Cataract Removal’ sounds too much like a public health information recording, maybe.

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